WILFUL NEGLECT OF A CHILD

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 309, 23 September 1920, Page 4

WILFUL NEGLECT OF A CHILD

"DIABOLICAL AND; INHUMAN TEEATMENT." 'By Telegraph—Press Association. I Christchurch, September 22. In the Magistrate's Court, before Mr. S. E. Jl'Cartliy, S.M., Herbert Charles Boss and Catherine Annie Henrietta Ross, a young married couple, were charged under section 28 of the Infant Life Protection Act with having, during the past six months, wilfully neglected and exposed an illegitimate male child, aged two years and seven months, in a man' ner likely to cause the child unnecessary Buffering' and injury to health. The evidence' showed that the female accused was the mother of the child, and that the putative father had been regularly paying maintenance. On September 14 a constablo and a nursa in the employ of the Public Health Department. visited the homo of the accused, and found the child in a neglected and poorly-clad condition sitting on a hard chair in the yard. Its feet were swol lon with large sores. The constable informed the mother that the child seemed to be slowly dying, and she admitted that she was unable to give it the care it should have. .There were three other children in the family-two the legitimate offspring of the accused and an- ■ other illegitimate child. A medical man said that the condition of the child named in the charge was duo to starvation and neglcct. Accused denied that the child had been starved, <md stated that it had received the same nourishment as the other children. His Worship remarked _ that the treatment extended to the child was diabo.icnl and inhuman to the last degree. Bach wa& sentenced to throe months imprisonment. '